In one sense, it's as common a love story as you could hope to find: Two people meet, fall in love, make a family. In another, it's a tragedy, because the daughter of this particular couple — two men whose daughter was born via donor egg and gestational surrogate — is going to die, simply because of the circumstances of her conception.

William Heisel in the Los Angeles Times introduces us to Bruce Steiger and Rick Karl, a California couple who faced more difficulty conceiving than many gay couples do. Two IVF transfers with their first donor's eggs failed. Two subsequent attempts with different donors failed as well. Finally they were matched with Alexandra Gammelgard, a proven donor with a successful conception to her credit.

Gammelgard, however, is a carrier for Tay-Sachs disease. In its most common form, Tay-Sachs eventually renders its victims blind, deaf, and unable to swallow. Paralysis, muscle atrophy, and seizures follow. Although children with Tay-Sachs appear to develop normally during their first several months of life, they usually die by age 4 or 5. There is no cure.

Karl is also a carrier. When both genetic parents are carriers, a child has a 25% chance of having the disease. Krystie, now 2, has Tay-Sachs.

According to the Times article, neither Steiger nor Karl were screened for any genetic abnormalities. The agency that matched them with Gammelgard promised a thorough screening of their donor. But what constitutes thorough screening is open to interpretation. Because of her heritage, and based on what she knew of her family medical history, Gammelgard was judged to be at low risk for carrying Tay-Sachs, and therefore no blood test was done.

Forgive me for this, because it is, I know, unseemly for me to criticize any egg donor when one has so enriched my own life, but Gammelgard seems ever so slightly flaky to me. "The particulars of Alexandra Gammelgard's egg donations are a bit of a blur to her," reports Heisel, with Gammelgard having used two, or maybe three, agencies to donate to at least four infertile couples. She characterizes her donations as one of "so many crazy, random things" she did during college, when she was trying to fund her education; she doesn't remember the details of the agencies she worked with.

This now presents a problem, not strictly for Gammelgard but for the other couples who received her donated eggs. "Neither she nor the agency has made any effort to inform the other families who used Gammelgard as a donor," writes Heisel, who points out that some of the resulting embryos could still be in storage awaiting transfer — in other words, that other parents may have waiting for them the same kind of heartbreak Steiger and Karl are now facing. (In a followup article, Gammelgard said that because of the story in the Times, she now intends to contact the other agencies she worked with so that they can alert their patients. One assumes public scrutiny has helped her remember those details.)

In response to this case, SART — the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, the fine folks who bring us the all-important statistics on IVF success rates — is proposing a registry to compile such information about gamete donors and surrogates. "Donation agencies and fertility clinics would submit identifying information about donors and surrogates," writes Heisel, "including Social Security numbers and birth dates. That information would be linked to results of drug tests, sexually transmitted disease tests and genetic screenings. And all of that data would be linked to outcome information supplied by obstetricians."

While the benefits of such a centralized system are clear, the problems with it are just as obvious. By participating in the registry, donors would potentially be sacrificing their privacy, which for many is a primary condition of their donation. This loss of anonymity could cause the existing donor pool to dry up virtually overnight, as it did in Great Britain when donor compensation and anonymous donation were made illegal. This is bad news for potential parents, of course, but also troubling in its implications for donors, who can be pardoned if their preference for privacy trumps their altruism.

It's impossible to read this kind of story and not find myself in it somewhere. We start at the dodged-a-bullet level: During our first several IVFs, neither Paul nor I were asked about our genetic background beyond the standard medical history, even though we each belong to one of the groups who most commonly carry Tay-Sachs, and, my God, what if...? And then we progress to damn-that's-kind-of-scary: We now know we're not carriers because we were later tested, but what if there's something else? And on down the line to boy-am-I-stupid: I can't believe I didn't even ask to see the standard questionnaire our clinic's donors must complete. I have no idea how comprehensive that screening was. What if donor 294 was sort of a flake herself? And then, I am ashamed to admit, we proceed to my-God-what-have-I-done?: Maybe an anonymous donation wasn't the best idea, after all.

And then I come to my senses. "What if?" didn't come to pass. There's probably not "something else." 294 could be a flake, and our clinic could be negligent; even so, we'll be okay. And who can say what's the best idea, when one's choices are so circumscribed and one's stamina starts to flag? We'll only know that years from now, if then. But in the moment, we all make the best decisions we can, based on the information available to us at the time.

I have to believe that was true for us. I think it's true for Bruce Steiger and Rick Karl. And although I wish with all my heart that they'd had more information, and that they didn't face such an unfathomable loss, I also hope that making more, better information available to other infertile couples won't make it more difficult for the rest of us to become parents.